Press Release
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Press release Museum Frieder Burda Opens “Salon Berlin” A new space for encounters, exchange and inspiration: Salon Berlin by Museum Frieder Burda, one of Germany’s most successful private museums, serves as a showroom for the museum and its collection, thus opening a window to Baden-Baden, where the focus remains on an extensive programme of exhibitions. (The exhibition “The Candle”, with works by Gerhard Richter, Thomas Demand, Robert Gober, Jeff Koons and Andreas Slominski, among others, begins on 22 October 2016). Closely connected with its parent museum in Baden-Baden, Salon Berlin, under the curatorial direction of Patricia Kamp, presents the diverse aspects of the museum programme and the Frieder Burda collection. The exhibition space also sees itself as a forum for international contemporary art. It simultaneously represents a display window and an experimental room for the Museum Frieder Burda. Topical thematic exhibitions, solo presentations and events place the Salon Berlin in dialogue with the capital’s vibrant art scene. Its opening revives an old and proud tradition in the city – in contemporary form at a historical place in the midst of Berlin’s most lively art quarter. Salon Berlin is located in the former School for Jewish Girls in Auguststrasse. The complex, located directly opposite the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, has already been introduced in an artistic context at the 4th Berlin Biennale 2006. It has been home to a range of art institutions and galleries for several years. The bar and restaurant on the premises and its direct proximity to various other artistic outlets in the neighbourhood make the place perfect in terms of location and space. Following on from the culture of the salon, Salon Berlin sees itself as a space for exchange and inspiration – both between historical and contemporary artistic positions, between museum and artists and not least between Baden-Baden and Berlin. Under the curatorial direction of Patricia Kamp, a Berlin-based curator and member of the Burda family, the rooms covering 230 m³ will be used for various formats. Her goal is to keep developing the collection and its vitality in the future: “I am delighted to be able to open this absolutely ideal location in Berlin for our collection based in Baden-Baden. The architectural situation in the historical building and its location in and connection to the city’s most vibrant artistic neighbourhood enables us to realise exactly what I have had in mind for some time. We are no simple branch office co-ordinating the link between Berlin and Baden-Baden, nor are we just an information point that tells you about the work being done in connection with the museum and collection in Baden-Baden. Above all, we are also an independent exhibition space that presents highlights from our extremely extensive collection at a place with a high level of public interest – at the same time, seeking a dialogue with a new generation of artists.” Patricia Kamp already put this approach to the test for the institution with the successful exhibition project “JR”, which took place in 2014 in the urban spaces of Baden-Baden and in Museum Frieder Burda. Frieder Burda, founder and patron of the Museum Frieder Burda, goes on: “A collection or a museum can only remain lively and avoid becoming static if it continues to develop. Building a bridge between Baden-Baden and Berlin, as a centre of the international art world, and thus attracting greater attention, is an exciting challenge for all of us.” The first exhibition project: Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke – the works of German Expressionism in the home of his parents represented Frieder Burda’s first encounter with art and became the basis of an international collection that has been expanded decade for decade until this day. Therefore, a selection of expressionist masterpieces will launch an exhibition series devoted to the most important focal points of the Frieder Burda Collection. The works on show in “Das Schöne, das ich suche” function as snapshots of the subjects that occupied the expressive, figurative painting of the early 20th century in Germany: the fascination exercised by the city, the yearning for nature and a primordial life and true feelings. Museum Frieder Burda · Lichtentaler Allee 8b · 76530 Baden-Baden Telefon +49 (0)7221 39898-0 · www.museum-frieder-burda.de One outstanding example is Max Beckmann, whose approach was about, as he put it himself, “transcendental realism”. Like Kirchner, his painting aimed to depict the hidden and unspeakable behind the “appearance of reality”. His views of Baden-Baden, which he created in Berlin just before his emigration in 1937, portray a mundane spa town with a strange melancholy – no glittering balls or extravagant nights at the casino, rather deserted streets in pale light. “Das Schöne, das ich suche”, demonstrates how interior and exterior worlds, history, biography and artistic vision are overlaid in painting. “The first exhibition project in Salon Berlin consciously refers back to the roots of Frieder Burda’s great art collection. From his childhood on, Burda was surrounded by his parents’ art collection in Offenburg, which had its main focus on German Expressionism,” says Patricia Kamp about the first show in the new salon. “At the same time, this collection inspired his fascination with the power of painting and colour and challenged him to start his own collection and to become active in the field of contemporary art. The art-historical core of the exhibition, his parents’ collection and its later expansion by Frieder Burda, is therefore being presented in Berlin to mark the launch of the new space.” With about 1,000 works in its collection and an average of 200,000 visitors per annum, Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, built in 2004 by Richard Meier 2004 at Lichtentaler Allee, can boast successful figures. The spectrum of its collection ranges from German Expressionism through international post-war art to current global positions. It includes influential works by artists such as Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke, Jackson Pollock, Neo Rauch, Gerhard Richter and Germany’s most extensive complex of late works by Picasso. The latest exhibitions, discussed with great intensity in the media – and featuring the likes of Andreas Gursky, Gerhard Richter and Katharina Grosse – showed once again how the specific conditions offered by the institution, its architecture and its location, can inspire stablished greats of the art world to take on new challenges which attract not just lively public interest but also gain the approval of art specialists and experts. The special design of the “Salon” rooms is the work of Patricia Kamp herself. “The notion of the salon goes back to a legendary Berlin tradition – it was at the beginning of the last century that Berlin established itself as a worldly city and art metropolis. Expressionism was also at home here, and big city life was very often its subject.” She goes on: “My design is exactly focussed on the meeting of the private and the public that was so typical of the salon. It’s about living art, surrounding oneself with it and being inspired by it – far beyond the classical and often sterile White Cube.” Further information and photos: www.museum-frieder-burda.de at “PRESSE / Login”. Please log in with your email address and your existing password or register. Press contacts: Kathrin Luz +49 (0)171 3102472, [email protected] Ute Rosenfeld +49 (0)7221 39898-33, [email protected] Opening Salon Berlin Thursday to Saturday, 12 am - 6 pm Museum Frieder Burda I Baden-Baden 22 October 2016 – 29 January 2017 I The Candle 11 February – 21 May 2017 I Sigmar Polke. Alchemy and Arabesque Museum Frieder Burda · Lichtentaler Allee 8b · 76530 Baden-Baden Telefon +49 (0)7221 39898-0 · www.museum-frieder-burda.de .